


The Death Sweeps Me Away

by somedayisours



Series: Before All Others [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: -Ish, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Child Death, Experimental Style, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Not by main characters, Origin Story, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Revenge, Transphobia, You don't look pretty when you've been crushed to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 05:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17913011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somedayisours/pseuds/somedayisours
Summary: "He buried Nadja, Penuel, and his father on the side of the highway. Unmarked graves in foreign soil, Sokovia far behind them. He would never see them again, at least the view was beautiful." His family is dead, there is only to move forward.





	The Death Sweeps Me Away

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Foreign Wife Elegy_ by Yuko Taniguchi.

Helmut spent days prying the rubble of their home off the bodies, the damning hope fluttering in his chest that they would be alive under there, pinned in place. Hope that maybe they weren't even there at all.

They were exactly where he told them to be, curled together as if asleep. As if sleeping could involve a father's head and chest being crushed by a concrete joist until it was nothing but red and pink and white meat. For a wife to stare open-mouthed with her teeth knocked loose like one of her eyes was, and the son in her arms to be blue instead of pink.

Helmut picked up what he could of the bloody chunks that his father left behind, Nadja's legs that'd been severed at the knee and the collection of pale teeth. He'd laided them together in the trunk of his stolen car, it too had to have been of the dead. They would not miss it.

She must have been the tallest woman in the bar, when he'd first met her, she was taller than most of the men, himself included. She'd been insecure enough over it to admit to him, cheeks flushed from the alcohol, that she'd never owned a pair of heels. Men didn't like it when she was taller than them, when they favoured her at all.

By the time they left the bar together, they'd been too drunk to do anything more than stubble back to his place and colapse on his bed together. He waited until the sixth date—and with much cajoling—to take her to a shoe store.

She wore heels when the teenagers on the other side of the street had yelled across 'to warn him' of the questionable nature of what lied under her skirt, as if that mattered to him. (As if he didn't already know.) She'd worn heels to meet his father, to visit his mother's grave, on their wedding day surrounded by friends, and when they stood together holding the baby that would soon be their son. When they named him Penuel after her paternal grandfather.

She wore heels on those severed legs.

He buried Nadja, Penuel, and his father on the side of the highway. Unmarked graves in foreign soil, Sokovia far behind them. He would never see them again, at least the view was beautiful.

He had an appointment to make, men to break.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't remember if Zemo's son was ever given a name within the movies, and I couldn't be bothered to look further beyond the quick google search I did.


End file.
